Catastrophe, Doom, and Oblivion

Lately, the climate change movement has been celebrating. A recent International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report expressed 95% confidence that half of the warming during the previous 60 years was manmade. In January, the EPA ruled that new coal plants must install carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology — technology that is not yet commercially viable (take that, climate deniers). Then there is the accumulation of almost 500 climate-related laws passed in 66 countries. According to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), "This surprising legislative momentum is happening across all continents. Encouragingly, this progress is being led by the big emerging and developing countries, such as China and Mexico, that together will represent 8 billion of the projected 9 billion people on Earth in 2050."

Riding the new-found momentum, climate change elites have sprung into action, reinvigorating the war on carbon and climate deniers. President Obama is conducting a regulatory version of Cap and Trade (legislation that failed to pass during his first term). He even has his own "Climate Change Action Plan." Senate Democrats are holding climate talkathons. John Kerry plans to broker a deal "committing the world’s economies to significant cuts in carbon emissions and sweeping changes in the global energy economy." Climate luminary Joe Biden theorizes, "It would be nice not to have any carbon fuels." To Al Gore, taxing carbon is not enough. "Tax denial," he chortles.

The policies of the past 25 years have failed miserably in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

But, the bravado and self-congratulatory rhetoric is a veneer, hiding an astounding lack of planet-saving progress. So too are the pompous slogans and the grandiose policies, built on a delicate foundation of "settled science," "social justice," and wishful thinking. They mask an astounding ignorance of global energy consumption and production trends, not to mention economic realities. God forbid they are celebrating the progress they expect from Obama's action plan and Kerry's climate deal. Their schemes offer nothing new, unless climate scientists discover a way for pompous slogans to reduce GHG emissions.

A litany of ambitious carbon reduction promises and sophomoric flat-earther insults is not a measure of actual planet-saving progress. Nor is a litany of vain and, at best, nebulous "accomplishments" such as laws passed, treaties discussed, money spent, solar panels and windmills produced, and green jobs created. What is the actual effectiveness of the policies? Are we on track to keep GHG emissions below 450 ppm by 2050 (to avert the "carbon tsunami" and our fall from the "climate cliff")? How much do we have to pay developing countries as climate change compensation? How much will it cost to prevent the catastrophic 7.2-degree Fahrenheit global temperature increase that some authorities predicted to occur by 2100? Will these amounts be sufficient to finally save the planet?

One hopes that what is past is not prologue. The policies of the past 25 years have failed miserably in reducing global GHG emissions. They include 20 years of generous subsidies for renewable energy and the splurge of $150 billion in loans to green energy companies such as Solyndra, Abound Solar, Evergreen Solar, and A123 Systems. The current European Union plan (EU 20/20), said to be the world's most significant climate policy, will cost $20 trillion through the end of the century and would reduce the global temperature by 0.1°F. $20 trillion for a 0.1°F decrease? What about the other 7.1 Armageddon-like degrees?

Perhaps Obama's Climate Action Plan — constructed with similar haste, method, and disdain for economic and scientific realities – will be more effective than the EU 20/20 plan. Whatever he has in mind, it had better work fast. At the 2007 Climate Change Conference, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon proclaimed that the world is at a crossroads, where "one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear." We must choose soon: "The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point." What has been accomplished since? No new treaties (toothless or otherwise). The Kyoto Protocol, still the world's only climate change treaty, has actually weakened. Russia, Japan, and Canada have recently dropped out — despite Obama's 2008 heal-the-planet speech. The officially designated rescue fuels (solar, wind, and biofuel) account for less than 2% of the world's energy supply; oil, gas, and coal account for 87%. GHG emissions are increasing, faster than ever. Evidently, we opted for oblivion.

By replacing coal with natural gas, the shale-energy revolution has reduced US emissions by 300 million tons — an amount that exceeds the world's total reduction from solar and wind power combined.

According to a recent UN study, thanks to the abysmal failure of world governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we are probably doomed. English climate change scientist James Lovelock more than agrees; he believes we're only 40 years from global catastrophe. Unlike American climate gurus, Lovelock may have noticed the ongoing global energy shift in which developing countries are expected to consume 65% of the world's energy by 2040. Of all experts, Mr. Obama should have noticed that the developing world is hurtling into the future, furiously burning every calorie it can find of what he calls "yesterday's energy."

As this trend — said to "foreshadow a climate change catastrophe" — intensifies with the population growth of developing countries, other climate change experts warn that the end could come even sooner. Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara speculated, "It could be that the 2016 Games are the last Olympics in the history of mankind." Holy shit! No wonder Obama doesn't have time for meetings with the "Flat Earth Society."

This is a glimpse, from the world of climate change believers, of the effectiveness of the policies of their revered political leaders: catastrophe, doom, and oblivion, arriving ahead of schedule. Damn those flat-earthers.

In the real world, however, most people don't see the coming climate havoc with such clarity, or any clarity. Among the reasons for this hazy, infidel view: the temperature trend that produced the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 began to fade in, well, 1998; global temperatures have not increased in the 16 years since 1999. But climate change believers see it; they predicted it — all the horror that, for decades, they have been attributing to climate change. And they see the failure. Yet they refuse to see the vivid connection between paltry emissions reduction and futile policy.

The failure to save the planet is not the result of insufficiently apocalyptic warnings or public ridicule directed at uncooperative climate change deniers. Those who are unaware of the earth's curvature and temperature are irrelevant — all ten of them. Rather, it is the 6.9 billion people (of the 7 billion inhabiting the planet), who pay little, if any, attention to the incessant, shrill, vile, delusional hyperbole of the clueless climate-change elite. They are too busy dealing with bigger problems. The vast majority of people in the industrialized world are much more troubled by economic stagnation, unemployment, and debt. People in the developing world are consumed by the problems of poverty, famine, oppression, ignorance, despair, and natural disasters, to name a few — all the while struggling to be like their industrialized brethren. And when they become industrialized, they will switch to worrying about economic stagnation, unemployment, and debt. Only after that will they worry about climate change. Possibly.

Then there is the irrational insistence that renewable energy, alone, must save the planet. It is clear to anyone, except the political ideologues who long ago hijacked the global warming movement, that solar panels and windmills are not up to the task. At present, only subsidy and delusion sustain them. And who else but boneheads with a pie-in-the-sky political agenda would blithely dismiss more intelligent, proven technologies (natural gas and nuclear power) that could drastically reduce GHG emissions. For example, by replacing coal with natural gas, the shale-energy revolution (not the Obama green revolution) has reduced US emissions by 300 million tons — an amount that exceeds the world's total reduction from solar and wind combined — while reducing American energy costs by $100 billion.

Last September, in Why Climate Activists Need to Dial Back on the Panic, environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg lamented, "Our climate conversation has been dominated by fear and end-of-the-world thinking." He recommended that "instead of being scared silly, we need to realize that global warming is one of many challenges to tackle during the 21st century and start fixing it now with low-cost, realistic innovation." Maybe there is hope for the global warming movement.

There stood the imperious and clueless Kerry, trying to scare people who live in a "ring of fire" into worrying about a little carbon-induced warming.

Maybe not. Only a few months later, John Kerry descended upon Indonesia, brandishing global warming as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), and promptly accused climate deniers of "burying their heads in the sand." Kerry, no doubt, thought that punching up his vapid climate change rhetoric with an edgy WMD metaphor would persuade Indonesians to turn down their thermostats and pump up their tires. Except that in Indonesia, where the average annual income is barely $3,000, most people don't have thermostats and tires.

Kerry also seemed unaware of the volcano that killed several people just two days before his arrival, and that Indonesia is located in the "Pacific Ring of Fire," so named for its deadly and frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But there stood the imperious and clueless Kerry, trying to scare people who live in a "ring of fire" into worrying about a little carbon-induced warming. Perhaps his "most fearsome weapon of mass destruction" embellishment will have more success in China, which accounts for almost 60% of the recent increase in global coal consumption, or in India, where the average annual income is $984.

For anyone who is serious about reducing manmade GHG emissions, there is nothing to celebrate. John Kerry (and his ilk) can offer nothing but catastrophe, doom, and oblivion to the global warming crusade.

#39;s energy.

About this AuthorSteve Murphy is a retired missile defense systems engineer and software developer living on top of Green Mountain in Huntsville AL, where he does a little consulting, plays the stock market and writes — mostly about economics, science, and American life. He can be contacted at sfm@hiwaay.net.